


Anthem Of Your Underground

by hishn_greywalker



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Hunter Community, Season/Series 02, the harvelle roadhouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-05
Updated: 2007-01-05
Packaged: 2018-10-20 19:33:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10669347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hishn_greywalker/pseuds/hishn_greywalker
Summary: Hunters talk.





	Anthem Of Your Underground

**Author's Note:**

> because everyone seems to know the Winchester's, but the boys don't seem to know many of them. title from "at your funeral" by saves the day. Carl is a mostly throw away character that bit me and made me write him. he has no past or future, unless someone else wants to write it.

In the early afternoon, the old yellow lights of Harvelle's Roadhouse made the interior dim. The few men at the bar didn't seem to mind, and those scattered in the corners were glad for the shadows. It was only around three in the afternoon, but every hunter lived and breathed a different life than most people. The time of the day didn't really matter, as long as the beer was cold and the company was good, or at least minded their own business and kept out of what they shouldn't know. Talk was slow on that day, the men's voices just a murmur once you moved more than a few steps away, start and stop like honey on a warm afternoon.

Most of the men there looked relaxed, probably more so there than they did almost anywhere else. The Roadhouse was considered a safe house by many of them and because so many hunters frequented the place, none of them made trouble there. It wasn't really because it was the Roadhouse, or because of what any one of a dozen hunters who considered Ellen family would do to them if they roughed her or her place up, but because bad blood between two hunters needed to stay between two hunters. Bringing it to the table at the Roadhouse would only open it up to far too many people, with far too many opinions and grudges.

That said, just because none of them brought their own issues up with each other didn't mean that they didn't gossip like old crones about each other.

"You hear about the run in Gordon Walker had up north?" one of them asked, taking a long look at the others as he raised his glass of beer to his lips.

One of the others nodded, but the rest either shook their head or just looked blankly at him. He grinned a little, but it wasn't a happy grin. It was a grin they all recognized though – it was the same one any of one of them had when they recounted a hunt that had gone well, or a piece of especially grisly but good news.

"Well, he was up in Montana – in Red Lodge – between Yellowstone and Columbus," the others nodded, even if they had no clue where the place was. They now had a general direction that they could plot the story on in the map each of them carried around in their heads. "He was hunting a nest of vampires. I don't know how he found them – they'd been off the radar for a while."

He took a long pull of his beer, settling back on his bar stool. "See, and that's what caught these other boy's attention, the Vampires getting killed off. The papers didn't say nothin' about Vampires, just people bein' decapitated."

Everyone was nodding again, because they all knew that was what would happen anywhere, and they all knew if they'd seen a bunch of articles about a bunch of people being beheaded and the cops having nowhere to go in the case, they'd have at least gone to check it out.

"So the boys, they go to town looking for the decapitator. They meet up with Walker somehow – he never said, of course – and it's all well and good until it ain't. Walker says they turned on him – tied him up and left. But he won't say nothin' about the hows and the whys," the man finished, looking at all of the other faces.

There were a few raised eyebrows at the last statement. Betraying another hunter, especially if they were working a case together, was serious business. If someone would do it once, there wasn't anything to say they wouldn't do it twice.

"Who was it, Carl?" someone on the end asked.

Carl's grin became just a bit more feral at the question.

"The Winchester boys."

 

 

The Winchester boys were known, and had been for a while by then. They'd been known since before anyone knew just who they were, how old they were, anything much more than that John Winchester had two sons and that all three could hunt like nobody's business. And they did. They hunted with a vengeance that was cool headed and smart, not hot and rage-filled like so many.

Bobby Singer had known the truth for a long time, as had Father Murphy (Pastor Jim to others) out in Blue Earth and that kid, Caleb. No one knew the hows or the whys or the whens, but when anyone mentioned the Winchesters around any of them, they all got tight lipped and said nothing more than that they owed them. Ellen knew something about them too, but then, she knew something about them all.

The first time anyone besides those few who knew the Winchester's well learned anything about them, about just how young they were and how amazing the stuff they were doing really was, it had been because John had called Carl in a hurry, asking for an emergency ammo restock since he was the closest person for a good 100 miles that had the right kind of stuff.

They'd met 25 miles out of a small town in Nebraska, at dusk. It was the middle of summer, the cool breeze off-setting the almost too warm night that was coming on. The sun was low on the horizon, throwing everything into long shadows.

When Carl pulled up in the field, John was leaning against the supped up Impala that he babied while two kids fought in front of him. Carl didn't need to look more than once to know that they were sparring and didn't need to look more than twice to know that the kids were trained up good. They stopped as one when he came closer, dropping back behind John as he stepped forward to greet Carl. The older one was wound up tense and the younger one held himself loosely, but he had no doubt that together they could take him down, and was pretty sure the older one could handle him alone.

"John," he greeted, somewhat unsettled. It took him a minute for him to realize what he was feeling was awe, partly because John was a good 10 years younger, and partly because he hadn't shown up on anyone's radar until just 10 or 15 years before. The few hunter's he did feel like that around were older, wiser. One's that had been around a while.

"Carl," John greeted in return. As it was, Carl still felt a little bit of pride in the fact that John would think of him, and that he and John had met enough times that they were on a first name basis. There weren't too many out there who John trusted enough to call them by anything but their last name.

John glanced over at the boys, who obviously picked more up from it than Carl did. The older one shifted, defiance in every bit of him. The younger one was watching Carl still, as if he was waiting for Carl to make a move while John and the other kid had it out silently.

"Dean," John warned, nearly growling, and the older boy rolled his eyes. It hit Carl then just who these kids were. These were the boys who had taken out a pack of werewolves on their own, three months before, and tricked some voodoo priestess into some sort of self destruction–rebound circle that no one he talked to had ever heard of (let alone of it working).

Yeah, these two were John Winchester's infamous boys, and they were all of fourteen and eighteen.

 

 

It was obvious that Dean and Sam had had no clue who he was. Carl wasn't much for modesty, at least not when it came to his hunting, and he had no problem admitting he was a pretty damned good hunter.

When he had introduced them - "Dean, Sam, this is Carl Flemming. Carl, my sons, Dean and Sam" - and then hurried them away with another glance, which was accompanied by a sigh from Dean, Carl knew the boys had no clue who he was. He hadn't seen the boys since then, but he had no doubt that they'd tense if they saw him, curious as to why he was wherever he was, nearly shocked that he was a hunter. Not really shocked, because they all knew that John had kept a lot of secrets, but nearly.

He spread the word about how young they were slowly and carefully. It didn't end up doing anything but fuel the fire, giving the Winchester boys more strength to their name than any other hunter had. At 27 and 23, the two boys had more tales spun about them and more legends based on them than most hunters would ever dream about. They had gone after things that many of them, men who had been hunters for 20 or 30 or 40 years would have left alone, or at least thought twice about before going after.

To top it all off, they were good at it all. Most hunters could take care of the easier things, but when it all came down to it, they had their specialties. Father Murphy was the best source for anything related to an exorcism and Gordon was the go-to man for anything on Vampires. Caleb could tell you anything you wanted to know, and probably more, about werewolves and Bobby was the man you needed to see if it had anything to do with the folklore of Old World Gypsies. Carl himself was the man you needed to see where Black Dogs were concerned. John Winchester was – had been – the person to see if you needed information on Demons, or how to hunt them. His boys, however, knew more than a lot about everything. And if they hadn't heard of it or didn't know much about it, they knew how to find out, all without talking to another hunter.

 

 

"The Winchester boys, huh?" asked Joe from a few barstools down.

Carl nodded.

Taylor, who was a few barstools down, grunted. "They wouldn't do that, not without cause," he grumbled. He had been one of the few who'd been around a town the Winchester boys had hunted. It had been an old goldminer ghost up in the Badlands of South Dakota, back before the youngest Winchester had gone off to college. Whatever he had seen happen had caused him to defend the Winchesters without fail.

Everyone else was nodding too, some slower than others. But they all agreed with the sentiment. They'd all had their own run ins with Gordon Walker over the years.

"What do you reckon Walker did?" someone else asked. There were a few snorts, but no one denied they were all on the same page.

"Probably did something to the younger one," Carl said, recalling all of the stories about how protective the older one was of his brother, and almost felt bad for Walker for a moment. He could remember being shocked to hear they'd split up, recalling the way they moved together and seemed to just know each other – the other's movements and nearly each other's thoughts.

The youngest going off to college had surprised everyone but the few who knew him as more than a name. It had taken the older one a while to get back on the radar, and always for smaller things. Once his brother was back, though, it was back to the unbelievable tricks they'd been pulling for years.

When Carl had first found out one had gone off, he'd been sure it had been the defiant older one. He found out later it was the younger one, and that he had been one who had always fought with his father. It had surprised him. He wondered, sometimes, what had happened to cause the switch from the kids he'd seen, or if maybe he'd seen something few other people had ever seen, a rare occurrence that wasn't much worth mentioning to most.

Further up the bar, Taylor snorted. "Probably."

Talk turned to something else then, a ghost haunting a piece of rail track up north, a werewolf spirit down in Arizona. It was a few hours later when another hunter stumbled into the bar, a little worse for the wear but nothing horrible or even really notable. At least, it wasn't enough for anyone to make a comment.

After he was well into his beer, the others finally got what they wanted out of him – information on what he was dealing with.

"I've got a poltergeist that's somehow managed to make friends with a fire demon, or one of them is playing off the other or something. Whatever it is, if I get near to getting rid of one, the other gets in the way and stops me," the hunter told them, draining his beer dry and taking the next one someone offered him.

The others winced at his story. One alone would be something most of them could take care of, at least as long as the demon wasn't something major. But together, pulling the stunts that were described, it sounded a bit more complicated.

The better part of three beers and most of an hour was spent throwing out ideas that wouldn't work, discussing what could possibly be the answer but most probably not. It was then that one of them brought up a way that wasn't quite as bad and actually might work – a way to bind the demon and take car of the poltergeist before sending the demon back to hell.

"What made you think of that?" Joe asked.

Carl grinned into his beer, already knowing the story behind the idea coming to mind. He let the other guy answer, though.

"Something the Winchester boys did, a few years back."

Yeah, the Winchester boys were legends in the shadowed corners and the dimly lit bars, but there was truth there.  



End file.
